RomanDavis comments on Religion's Claim to be Non-Disprovable - Less Wrong
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There are just so stories about both the recent and distant past invented all the time. Even when disproved people continue to still believe them. Religion isn't a special case; these are every where.
There are all sorts of widely believed bullshit about foreign cultures, unfamiliar occupations, and everything else. Just read snopes.
In Egypt? With all the evidence we have? Unlikely.
Is it fair to say that you'd agree that the authors of the Epic of Giglamesh were lying about everything?
You can't have it both ways: either the Ancients were smart and skeptical enough to believe in miracles based on evidence, or they were a bunch of plebs who only believed what the official history was. Not both.
But they weren't. The symmetry isn't there. They were all or very, very mostly all dead at that point.
At this point, we aren't even talking about a world religion, just a particularly successful cult. How many people alive have personally met L Ron Hubbard? How many people are Scientologists? There you go.
There's no evidence of that.
I think the authorities in this case refer to the Romans, who had been pretty successful with the whole religious tolerance thing. They let all sorts of insane mystery cults hold sway over small groups of followers as long as they recognized Roman law. The Romans would see a new cult, the eigth messiah in just as many years, and made sure they paid their taxes and didn't make trouble, at least as long as they couldn't be viewed as a threat.
The Jews are another matter, of course:
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/false_prophets/dt13_01.html